Contemporary humanity is marked by its relentless assertion “I’ve got to be me.” So secure are we that individual self-expression is the highest possible ideal, that we often assume our own propriety as a matter of course. If someone won’t do as we say, if there is a conflict between us and someone else, then the presumption is that they are in the wrong. If our own urges conflict with the communal interest, we assert our individual drive above the needs of the community.
This tension—between individual self-interest and the needs of the community—is not the novelty of this generation. It has a pedigree and an antiquity that stretches back to the very beginnings of humankind. But what is new is our smug comfort with sitting on one extreme, that of the individual above all else, without a trace of tension or validity to what a community might legitimately demand of its members. “I want it all now” has too often replaced “What does the Lord require of me?” as the measure of all things.
Today’s Torah portion offers a subtle hint in that same direction, nudging us back to the derekh yesharah, the straight path balancing personal and social interests in a more fruitful tension.
The opening verses of the Book of Numbers speak of the census of the Israelite tribes as they prepare to resume their wanderings in the wilderness. Both the regular Israelites and the Levites are numbered and counted. Yet the rabbis of antiquity noted that the words used to mandate both counts were not the same. When God ordered the Levites to be numbered, “Moses recorded them at the command of the Lord, as he was bidden.” But when the census of the normal Israelites was done, the Torah records “Moses recorded all the first-born among the Israelites, as the Lord had commanded them.”
What’s the difference between the two? When Moses counts the first-born Israelites, God is not actively involved; rather Moses does as God “had commanded” in the past. Whereas, when Moses records the numbers of the Levites, he does so in partnership with God: at the command of the Lord.” It is almost as though the two of them conducted the census of the Levites together.
Why would God be more involved in the Levites’ census and withdrawn from the counting of the first-born Israelites?
Midrash Ba-Midbar Rabbah responds, “the Levites were righteous and had not taken part in the incident of the Calf, but risked their lives for the sanctification of the Divine Name.” In other words, the Levites had refused to follow the idolatrous urges of their own hearts. However desirable it might have felt to construct and worship the Golden Calf, the Levites felt a communal obligation and a responsibility to God that prevented them from giving way to this destructive (although pleasurable) urge. The Israelites, on the other hand, put their individual pleasure before the needs of the community.
The Midrash continues, “The Holy Blessing One therefore said, ‘They [the Levites] associated themselves with Me, I also will associate Myself with them, by numbering them Myself and in My own glory.’ The first-born, however, withdrew themselves from the Holy Blessing One and offered sacrifices to the Calf. So the Holy Blessing One withdrew from their census.”
The obsessive focus on their own selves, their refusal to elevate the communal needs above their own self-expression reflected an idolatry—not of any statue, but of themselves as the measure of all things. They were so full of themselves that there was no room for loyalty, for discipline, for self-sacrifice. After all, what good would that do them as individuals.
And they were so full of themselves that there was no room left over for God. How can God dwell in a human heart that is completely absorbed with its own self-interest?
Too often, we follow the precedent of the first-born, rather than emulating the more humble, self-effacing, and wiser Levites.
Tzorkhei tzibbur, valuing the needs of the community, is the bottom line of meaningful Jewish survival. Our connection to each other is our shared history, our common destiny, and our shared brit (covenant with God. There can be no progress on social justice, on supporting each other through times of crisis and of joy if were are not willing to sublimate our own self-interest for that of our community and our people, if we are not ready to shoulder the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven rather than bow only to our own insatiable idiosyncrasies.
As we approach the festival of Shavuot, which celebrates the gift of the Torah at Mount Sinai, it is worthwhile recalling that the revelation was a public event, and that Torah can only be received and transmitted if there is a commanding sense of communal belonging and responsibility.
The voice of God is heard in through the many voices of the Jewish people as a whole, through the collective sense of the community, even as it was at Sinai.
Shabbat Shalom.